Girls and Ghosts

We’ve learned here at Spooked that secrets and curses can often lead to unexpected visitors. Some are friends and some… are foe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Glynn Washington?

  [4.7111.01] I held the quarter in my hand and asked to buy some candy. But the old man must have heard it wrong, because he poured me a brandy. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:26Glynn Washington?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all? Well, you've never heard it like this.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Radio Rental is a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  He's tapping. Tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Then their light turns on, and then their light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long, she looked shriveled, partially decayed.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with them to just please let me out. These eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it.

• 2:00Speaker 06

  Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:06Speaker 07

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• 2:30Speaker 07

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• 2:45Glynn Washington?

  Now you know I walk around Lake Merritt every single day. This glorious, beautiful treasure plunked right down in the middle of Oakland, California. A little urban oasis. One of those fixtures like the tide. Like the Bay Area fog, always showing a different side of herself. I learned a long time ago that walking her shoreline is where ideas come from. I love this lake. But just two weeks ago,

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  she died.

• 3:22Glynn Washington?

  Right before she passed away, on the northeast corner, walking, I noticed a change color. From blue to brown. Strange.

• 3:32Glynn Washington?

  The next day, she started to stink. I asked aloud if she was okay. Thought it must be the change of seasons.

• 3:41Glynn Washington?

  Later, I see the crows. Hundreds and hundreds of them perched on a cedar overlooking the water. These normally noisy birds, silent, looming.

• 3:54Glynn Washington?

  Then walk near the rocky shoreline. I see two large, beautiful striped bass floating, dead. What? I've been down to look closer. The water around them littered with dozens of dying fish just below the surface. First, I think it's only in front of me. Maybe some localized poison, but I keep backing up my gaze. And at every turn, there are dying things as far into the water as I can see. Squirming, bat rays, catfish, flounder, steelhead. I had no idea what swam beneath these waters until seeing their corpses. Hundreds.

• 4:40Glynn Washington?

  Thousands of corpses. And the crows are waiting.

• 4:46Glynn Washington?

  Now they're people. People looking at each other in horror. People who walk this lake every day with me. People shouting, pointing, taking pictures. Others trying to call someone at the city, the state, the fish and wildlife. Someone in charge, someone who can do something. But we aren't the doctor. There is no medicine, no resuscitation. Now we're just a coroner bearing witness. Cause of death, pollutants, climate change, algae bloom, all fancy ways for saying, "We did this." "We killed her."

• 5:29Glynn Washington?

  "We did." And I can't help but wonder if we can murder an entire lake, an entire ecosystem by accident. What can we kill on purpose?

• 6:02Glynn Washington?

  Spookstons.

• 6:07Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 6:57Glynn Washington?

  What if? What if? What if?

• 7:02Glynn Washington?

  Now, in the 1930s, in the 1940s, Roberta Simpson Brown. Roberta lived on her family's farm, and life could get a little dull in the country, until Cousin Linzo came to visit.

• 7:40Speaker 08

  I grew up down near Lake Cumberland in Kentucky in a two-room log house.

• 7:48Speaker 08

  We grew corn and tobacco. Mom had a garden, and we had farm animals. Daddy wouldn't let us name them because then he couldn't sell them. We had to keep them if we named them.

• 8:02Speaker 08

  We had several fields. There was a little creek running through it, a very cold spring, woods on the hill behind.

• 8:18Speaker 08

  Also on our property, there was a sinkhole.

• 8:23Speaker 08

  It was by an old wood shed just outside the backyard. It wasn't very big. Think of a kitchen sink, a double kitchen sink, and then think of it as a circle.

• 8:40Speaker 08

  We used the sinkhole as sort of a garbage disposal. Throw in chicken bones, just whatever was left over from supper.

• 8:50Speaker 08

  It wouldn't just go slurp and take it down, but in a few minutes, it would be gone. It would just suck up and suck down whatever we put in it.

• 9:03Speaker 08

  It was fun to throw things in the sinkhole.

• 9:13Speaker 08

  I loved the summers because my cousins came to visit.

• 9:21Speaker 08

  Linzo was my first cousin on my mama's side.

• 9:29Speaker 08

  He lived in Cincinnati. He was a city boy.

• 9:34Speaker 08

  Linzo came to visit us one summer because he was worrying his mother. She was a widow. And Linzo was getting in trouble, she thought. He was running with the wrong crowd. Smoking cigarettes and maybe stealing some fruit off the displays in front of the market. Definitely letting the schoolwork go.

• 10:01Speaker 08

  My aunt thought that if she sent Linzo to the country, my father could be a role model for him.

• 10:10Speaker 08

  I thought he was a little naughty because he would dare to do things that we didn't do. Like, he thought it was okay for him to get a watermelon off somebody's vine because that was just public property to him, you know? But I always thought he was charming.

• 10:32Speaker 08

  He made friends with the boy that lived on the next farm. His name was Earl.

• 10:39Speaker 08

  We had a woodshed and we would all go out there and play sometimes.

• 10:46Speaker 08

  We played horseshoe and my dad would let us shoot the rifle. We shot green apples off the trees sometimes.

• 10:58Speaker 08

  As the Fourth of July approached, one day Earl and Linzo were talking and I happened to be playing nearby, so I overheard what they were saying. They wanted to have their own display of fireworks.

• 11:18Speaker 08

  We lived too far away from town to get to go and see the displays.

• 11:24Speaker 08

  The only problem was, they had to raise the money to buy the fireworks.

• 11:32Speaker 08

  They finally got enough money, except for $1. I wanted to see the fireworks, but I didn't want to help raise the funds. I was happy to be off with my book, or paper dolls, and things like that by myself.

• 11:53Speaker 08

  One night, it was getting dark. My grandmother came in, and Earl and Linzo were with her. And she told my dad that Linzo had something to tell him. I thought, hmm, I wonder if he's in trouble over something. So, I listened, and Linzo said, "Uncle Tom, I'm so sorry, but I took your silver dollar. I didn't know it was anything special. I just wanted it to make up the money we needed for the fireworks."

• 12:50Speaker 08

  Grandma told us what happened later.

• 12:55Speaker 08

  My dad kept a silver dollar in a jar on the dresser, along with some other old pennies and things like that, I think. But this silver dollar was very special to him.

• 13:11Speaker 08

  His father had given it to him.

• 13:15Speaker 08

  Linzo happened to be walking past the dresser by my mom and dad's bed. And he thought, "Well, I'll just take Uncle Tom's silver dollar, and then I'll have Mama give him a dollar when she comes to pick me up."

• 13:33Speaker 08

  After supper that night, Earl came over. So they went out the woodshed because Linzo wanted to tell Earl all about the money. They had the money now for the fireworks.

• 13:45Speaker 08

  Linzo had the silver dollar in his hand and he said, "Look, Earl." Earl just looked at it. He said, "But you get that." And Linzo said, "Well, it was on Uncle Tom's dresser. I just borrowed it. I didn't steal it. I'm gonna pay him back."

• 14:06Speaker 08

  Earl said, "You shouldn't have done that.

• 14:10Speaker 08

  Everybody knows that his dad gave him that silver dollar before he died. And it means a lot to Uncle Tom."

• 14:19Speaker 08

  Linzo said, "Oh, I didn't know."

• 14:24Speaker 08

  They didn't hear Grandma Simpson approaching.

• 14:30Speaker 08

  As she walked up behind them, Linzo said, "Well, I'll give it back." And Grandma Simpson said, "Give what back?" And they whirled around and the silver dollar flew out of Linzo's hand and landed in the sinkhole.

• 14:54Speaker 08

  Grandma Simpson said, "What happened? What did you just do?"

• 14:59Speaker 08

  But of course, he had to tell her. And she said, "But you know you're gonna have to tell your Uncle Tom."

• 15:07Speaker 08

  Now, my dad was a pretty understanding man, so he didn't make a lot of to-do about it. He said, "Well, maybe he'll turn up."

• 15:19Speaker 08

  Linzo said, "I promise you,

• 15:23Speaker 08

  I'll find that silver dollar for you."

• 15:28Speaker 08

  He really admired my father. He looked up to my father.

• 15:36Speaker 08

  And he didn't want to do anything to displease him.

• 15:42Speaker 08

  Linzo went back to that sinkhole every day that he stayed for the rest of the summer and looked for that silver dollar. Just sat by the sinkhole and hoped that it would come bubbling up to the top or something. Kind of probe around to see if he could find it. He would say something about it sometimes at supper, that he wished he could find it. It just never turned up. His mom came to get him and she offered to pay, but my dad said, "No, it's one of those things that just happens."

• 16:26Speaker 08

  But as they left, Linzo said, "I'll come back next summer, I promise you, and I'll find that silver dollar." School came, winter came, finally, summer came. But Linzo didn't get to come down that summer. His grades were so bad that my aunt made him go to summer school. We were disappointed, but we went ahead with our horseshoe playing and games like that. And the 4th of July approached.

• 17:11Speaker 08

  We were happy that year because they were having a fireworks display at the local school and we could see the school from our backyard. So we took our chairs out in the backyard to watch. We all kept saying how much we wished Linzo could be there to actually see the fireworks this year. You know, we watched the fireworks and we're over.

• 17:42Speaker 08

  We got up, started to take our chairs inside,

• 17:48Speaker 08

  and we saw car lights.

• 17:51Speaker 08

  And as it got closer, we realized it was the sheriff's car.

• 17:58Speaker 08

  Now, back then, very few people had telephones.

• 18:04Speaker 08

  And when people had to get a message to somebody, they would call the sheriff and he would just drive out and deliver the message.

• 18:15Speaker 08

  He walked up to us, his head was bowed.

• 18:21Speaker 08

  He said, "Folks, I have some really bad news for you.

• 18:27Speaker 08

  I just got a call. Linzo was on his way home from school this afternoon on his bicycle.

• 18:38Speaker 08

  And he was hit and killed by hit-and-run driver."

• 18:46Speaker 08

  Well, we were just stunned. We couldn't believe it.

• 18:52Speaker 08

  Of course, we cried. We were all crying. We were sorry.

• 18:58Speaker 08

  Well, he stayed and he talked to us for a few minutes. And then he got in his car and he drove away. And my daddy said, "Well, let's just take our chairs on in the house."

• 19:11Speaker 08

  We started to do that, but something caught our eye.

• 19:19Speaker 08

  There was this light shimmering over the sinkhole.

• 19:26Speaker 08

  It was a white, silvery-looking thing.

• 19:31Speaker 08

  What is that thing? Where did it come from?

• 19:39Speaker 08

  And it was in a vague form of a person. No specific features, just hovering and shimmering over that sinkhole.

• 19:53Speaker 08

  It was like, "Oh my goodness, look at that. What is that? Did you see that?

• 20:02Speaker 08

  Daddy said, "You all stay here, I'll go see what it is."

• 20:08Speaker 08

  I liked to follow him everywhere, but Mom told me not to, so I stayed put.

• 20:15Speaker 08

  I saw my dad approach the sinkhole, and I saw the light disappear.

• 20:23Speaker 08

  And then I saw my dad bend down and look around the sinkhole. I saw him look up, and then back down.

• 20:34Speaker 08

  And then he reached and picked something up,

• 20:38Speaker 08

  and kind of fingered it, you know, in his hand. And then he stood up, and he walked slowly back up to where we were all standing.

• 20:51Speaker 08

  And he held out his hand, and he showed us that silver dollar.

• 21:00Speaker 08

  "Ah, look at that."

• 21:06Speaker 08

  Mama said, "Is that your silver dollar?"

• 21:10Speaker 08

  Daddy had to go inside and look with a light.

• 21:17Speaker 08

  He said, "This is my silver dollar."

• 21:23Speaker 08

  I think he was thinking he would like for Linzo to know that he'd finally found it.

• 21:30Speaker 08

  We sat and wondered what could have happened. I think it was Linzo.

• 21:39Speaker 08

  I believe they came back and kept his promise.

• 21:46Speaker 08

  There's confirmation to me, I guess, that people can keep their promise,

• 21:52Speaker 08

  even after they die.

• 22:06Glynn Washington?

  Roberta Simpson Brown. She's a storyteller and author in Kentucky, where she's known as the queen of the cold-blooded tales. Check out her book Haunted Holidays from the University Press of Kentucky. The original score was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Ann Ford.

• 22:35Glynn Washington?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Imagine opening my closet, looking for a shirt, and I see that jacket. That jacket, that jacket I got for that party I never went to three years ago. That jacket, it's still there. It's still mocking me. Well, it was still there. Because then I stopped and I reached for my phone because Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes that you no longer wear. Listing on Vinted is quick and simple. Once an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And Vinted has no seller fees. I mean, you keep every dollar you earn.

• 23:18Glynn Washington?

  And I could get a little more room in my closet, you know, for that next jacket. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. No seller fees, so you keep everything you earn.

• 23:53Glynn Washington?

  Now, she's Lamtha Rajamani. She's growing up in one of the biggest cities in the world, Mumbai. But every year, she spends the summer more than 700 miles away at her family's giant ancestral home in the country. With not just mom and dad, but dozens of other relatives, too. Spooked.

• 24:26Speaker 09

  When I was a child, it was fun. As I was growing up, it was like, what again? Can we just go somewhere else? It is so hard. You know, it was a little bit of a resentment. But also like, it was fun to have unlimited delicious food all day. Mangos and things that we wouldn't normally easily find in Bombay.

• 24:48Speaker 09

  Also fresh coconut.

• 24:51Speaker 09

  They would get it and throw it into the well. The well was like a refrigerator.

• 24:57Speaker 09

  Then they would get the coconut out of the well in the afternoon. And, you know, break it. And then you can use the palm leaf as a straw to drink fresh coconut water. Like, amazing.

• 25:18Speaker 10

  The family house is filled with different sacred plants, flowers and herbs. The one plant that's part of every single religious ritual in Sri Lata's family is the banana tree.

• 25:32Speaker 09

  The banana tree is considered female because it bears flower and fruit.

• 25:38Speaker 09

  It's like the banana tree is performing the ritual along with the women. They do the kunkum on the tree, like the kunkum that women wear. They call it bindi in North India, but in South India, we call it kunkum. It's a powder that is red and it is made of like turmeric and something else. And women wear that on their forehead.

• 26:04Speaker 09

  Fifth or sixth grade is when I started noticing I'm different from other people here. And I guess, like, I wore different clothes. You know, my cousins dressed in traditional clothes. The girls would wear like these long skirts. We call it a half saree. And I used to wear like dresses. And they would pinch my cheek, which I did not like. And they would say, oh my gosh, she is looking so fair. Maybe people in Bombay are very fair complexion. They would pinch my cheek harder. They like to tease me because I was from the city. I spoke Tamil differently.

• 26:39Speaker 09

  My Tamil was usually mixed with Hindi and English. But their Tamil was actual Tamil. They would make me say certain things and then they would laugh.

• 26:53Speaker 09

  One day, when we were in the kashir, I wanted to learn and I asked, "How do you know which cow to take the milk out of? How do you know how to do it?"

• 27:02Speaker 09

  My cousin Shankar said, "Oh yeah, there it is. You can try with that one." And I started pulling it and pulling it.

• 27:11Speaker 09

  It was a small calf.

• 27:14Speaker 09

  He made that kind of sound like,

• 27:18Speaker 09

  "My cousin Shubha came and said, "Why are you doing that? That was not going to give you any milk." That's when I discovered it. "Oh my God, I was molesting a tiny male calf." And my cousin just kept laughing and laughing. And I got so mad.

• 27:36Speaker 09

  The way I decided to take revenge was by watching them take a bath.

• 27:43Speaker 09

  It was a carefully thought out plan to destroy the fiend.

• 27:49Speaker 09

  So I went into one of the rooms, peering through the window. I was calling him, "Hey, I can see you. You're taking a bath. I can see your bum." And I laughed and I went out, feeling happy.

• 28:03Speaker 09

  But the news had reached my mother through mysterious sources. And she was there waiting for me in the main part of the house. She was like, "What did you do? How could you do this? This is so... You're so ill-mannered." And she spanked me hard in front of everybody.

• 28:20Speaker 09

  It was extremely humiliating. I was feeling very put upon because I had been the one made fun of consistently and that was somehow accepted. But when I turned the coin, it was like, "You know, you're a girl. You shouldn't be doing that."

• 28:36Speaker 10

  Sri Lata is so mad, she stomps off by herself up to the attic, where she can be alone.

• 28:45Speaker 09

  And I didn't want to be seen by anybody else because I was feeling ashamed to be treated like that. It was just a place where I could just be alone and lick my wounds.

• 28:58Speaker 10

  It's quiet in the attic and the light is dim. Sri Lata lies down on a mat on the floor to nap when she wakes up.

• 29:08Speaker 09

  The room was still dim, but I could see the shadows from outside. So I knew it had gotten a little bit darker outside. It wasn't night or anything, but it was probably getting dusk. Then I saw this woman, probably about six feet away. So I thought she is somebody from the family, like an auntie. But she was dressed like a bride, like in a wedding, very beautifully dressed. And she was wearing red sari. Both her nostrils were pierced with diamonds. She was wearing this gold belt-like thing, which normally brides wear. It's a part of bridal jewelry.

• 29:50Speaker 09

  She was wearing a big red kunkum on her forehead. Her face had this kind of power, but it wasn't something that made me feel scared. She was very beautiful, like her complexion was sort of like my grandmother's. And she had very long hair. She didn't say anything to me. She was just staring, probably a minute or less. I was waiting for her to say something. And then all of a sudden, she had this sickle, sort of a circular knife, just pretty sharp.

• 30:34Speaker 09

  All of a sudden, she takes her sickle and she slashes it towards me. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe. My body was turning clammy and cold. And then I felt something wet. It looked kind of red. I started screaming and I fainted.

• 31:00Speaker 09

  Next thing I know, my grandmother was patting me, putting sacred ash on my forehead.

• 31:09Speaker 09

  My mom was there. Mom was rubbing my hands and they were both, you know, calling me, calling my name out. My dad, he was yelling, asking, "What is wrong? What is wrong? What is wrong with her, with my daughter?"

• 31:24Speaker 09

  I was very scared. I was like, "Do I have a disease? Am I going to die?" Like, what happened was very, very scary.

• 31:32Speaker 09

  I started telling them that this woman was there and she slashed me. There was no visible wound and I was bleeding in my underwear.

• 31:45Speaker 09

  My grandmother and my mom were like, "Okay, okay, okay. Don't worry about this. First, you need to go and take a bath." And so they took me to the bathing area and my mom arranged for hot water.

• 32:00Speaker 09

  My grandmother and my mom were like whispering to each other. They told me that once I took the bath, I should not go and join the family, but I should go to a separate room.

• 32:12Speaker 09

  All I remember, my grandmother telling me, "From now on, don't be near men. Even if it's your own family, you should not be near men at all."

• 32:27Speaker 09

  There was a cultural belief that menstruating women were unclean, especially to men.

• 32:37Speaker 10

  No one is telling Srilatha that she's having her first period and she is still in a panic.

• 32:44Speaker 09

  I kept telling them that this woman slashed me, but they wouldn't believe. And they kept telling me, "It is a bad dream. You didn't really see anybody. Don't talk about this." But I also remember my mom and my grandmother having very long conversations quietly and they would stop talking anytime they saw me nearby.

• 33:05Speaker 09

  That entire summer that we were there was really terrifying.

• 33:10Speaker 09

  I was afraid that I was going to see her again and she was going to hurt me again. I was not able to go to sleep or would cry a lot.

• 33:21Speaker 09

  My dad would chant Vishnu Sahasranama, which is the thousand and eight names of God Vishnu. It is supposed to give health and courage and a lot of other good qualities.

• 33:33Speaker 09

  Sri Rama Rama Ramethi Ramé Ramé Manorame Sahasranama Tattvulyam Rama Nama Varanane.

• 33:49Speaker 10

  At the end of the summer, the family leaves the countryside and goes back to their apartment in the city.

• 33:56Speaker 09

  So, one day, my parents told me that great-grandfather had died and that we had to go through two weeks of the death ceremonies. And I did not know who he was and I asked which great-grandfather was, you know. And they would be, you know, the man who was sitting in the porch? He was the one who died. He is actually your dad's grandfather's brother.

• 34:19Speaker 09

  They would talk about him and they would talk about how he was cursed.

• 34:28Speaker 09

  He was actually the heir, you know, the oldest son in the family and he had been contracted for marriage with another wealthy family from a different village.

• 34:41Speaker 09

  There was a lot of gossip about the woman he had married. She was very beautiful and many people were envious. There were whispers about her saying that she was promiscuous, you know, she was not a virgin.

• 34:55Speaker 09

  So by the time their wedding night happened, he accused her. She felt insulted and angry and betrayed. So she killed herself with a sickle on their wedding night.

• 35:12Speaker 09

  Before that, she cursed him, saying, "Any person he marries or any person, any male member of his family marries will die and the family line will die out and there will be no future for them."

• 35:28Speaker 09

  Because of the curse, when they tried to marry him to other people, the women would mysteriously die. He decided to punish himself by living like a dead person.

• 35:41Speaker 09

  He never went inside the house. He would spend all his time in that porch area. And we all thought, you know, he's probably crazy because he never went in and he would never speak to anybody. People were not allowed to look at him or talk to him.

• 35:58Speaker 09

  And that's how he did for the rest of his life.

• 36:05Speaker 09

  His younger brother, who then took over the head of the family, he was my great-grandfather. He got married two times, and both times, his wives died. So then they went to a holy person, who said, "For you to break this curse, you need to do some penance."

• 36:27Speaker 10

  The penance was for her great-grandfather to take part in a marriage ceremony. But he would not marry a person. Instead, he would marry a different kind of living being, like a plant. Then, the holy person said, he would have to kill that plant, thereby killing the curse.

• 36:51Speaker 09

  What they did was, they got a young banana tree, which was not in bloom yet.

• 36:57Speaker 09

  My great-grandfather married the banana tree.

• 37:02Speaker 09

  The tree was then cut.

• 37:05Speaker 09

  And after that, the curse was lifted.

• 37:11Speaker 09

  He married the person who became my great-grandmother, and she was alive.

• 37:19Speaker 09

  That's why for every family celebration, the banana tree is still considered as part of our family.

• 37:27Speaker 09

  It's a witness and it is honored with kunkum and everything.

• 37:33Speaker 09

  Basically, like how you welcome a guest.

• 37:37Speaker 09

  To know, oh my god, the banana tree thing is probably only something my family does was super weird.

• 37:46Speaker 10

  While the banana tree is honored in every family ceremony, Srilatha can still not get past her memories of the beautiful woman with the sickle she saw in the attic.

• 37:59Speaker 10

  She thinks that was the same woman who put the curse on the family so long ago.

• 38:05Speaker 09

  I think she is still a part of the family in a way.

• 38:10Speaker 09

  Yes, I was scared, but I don't know that she hurt me. I think she had her reasons.

• 38:17Speaker 09

  I think in a way she was welcoming me into being a woman. Who knows?

• 38:23Speaker 09

  She was treated very unjustly and she deserves to be remembered. She does not deserve to be forgotten.

• 38:32Speaker 09

  And I hope in some way she knows there are people who think what happened to her was terrible and she deserved more and we will make sure that we don't treat anybody else like that.

• 38:47Speaker 10

  Srilatha's family still owns the ancestral home and Srilatha still visits it. Sometimes she brings her own daughter.

• 38:57Speaker 09

  My daughter is, yeah, she's 24. Yeah, when she had her period, we would talk about it openly and I never really followed this isolation thing. So when she went to India for the first time after she got her period, she was absolutely furious that they were treating her like that. When she goes and sees my parents, she would be like, you know, I'm not going to do that grandma and grandpa. Okay, I will not touch you, but I'm not going to stay away from everybody. I'm still going to be in the living room. And I've also told her about the ancestors, so she knows the story.

• 39:55Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Sri Latha, for sharing your story with Spooked. Sri Latha is comedian and storyteller based in New York City. The original score for this piece was by Lynx. It was produced by Anne Ford.

• 40:22Glynn Washington?

  Now, you know that stories, stories are the best kind of knowledge. And stories are meant to be shared. That's just the way they're built. That's just the way we're built. It's a crime to do otherwise. So let me ask you, do you have a story to tell? Maybe a story that you haven't told anyone else? Well, tell me. Spooked at snapjudgment.org, because there's nothing better than a Spooked story from a Spooked listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing Stupendous Sister podcast.

• 41:06Glynn Washington?

  It's called Snap Judgment. It's storytelling with a beat.

• 41:21Glynn Washington?

  Spook was created by the team that would cross their heart and hope to die if ever they should tell a lie. Except of course for Mark Ristich. He knows far better than to make idle promises. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hanbrich, Leon Morimoto, Teal Decot, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Frigno, Anne Ford, Eric Yanis, Cody Harjo, Lola Abraha, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stewart. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is Glynn Washington. And if, for one brief moment, one of the ancients were able to climb into a flying machine,

• 42:04Glynn Washington?

  to sail into the sky and look around them at the land beneath. They might not see everything. They might not see much, but maybe that brief glimpse would be just enough to hint at what they don't know. Some stories too, they give us a glimpse of the big forest before dropping us back down to earth. Across traditions, the wise tell us that we are blinded by what we think we know. They suggest instead, we should turn out the noise. Turn out the self-loathing, turn out the doubt,

• 42:46Glynn Washington?

  turn out the lies, turn out the darkness, turn out the hate. But never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the light.